Love in All Forms: The Big Book of Growing Up Queer

The term “pickle” can refer to almost any perishable foodstuff soaked in brine or vinegar but to most Americans, pickles are simply a cucumber transmuted into a salty sandwich topper.

The varieties are endless, Dill, Butter, half, whole, chips, tangy little ones called cornichons… High grade gourmet pickles that go for $8.99 a jar, limp mass produces spears that sell for $3.29 or $5.00 for two jars if you have a club card.

The average ingredients of a jar of kosher dill pickles are as follows: fresh cucumbers,water, distilled vinegar, salt, less than %2 of high fructose corn syrup, dried garlic, calcium chloride, spice, sodium benzoate, mustard seed, dried red peppers, natural flavor and polysorbate 80.

But Etta Levy doesn’t care about any of that. What Etta cares about is that each pickle is about five calories.

It was charming eccentricity. The slender pretty girl in her early 20′s, impeccably dressed, hiding jars of pickles around the office. For birthdays parties and christmas co-workers would gift wrap jars of Claussen and Vlassic. The Vice President of the company went on vacation to New Orleans one year and brought back a pricy half tub of home made pickles from the French Quarter’s Central Grocery. Etta was delighted and went home to the two bedroom apartment she shared with her boyfriend to put them in the fridge.

“Are you shitting me?” John leaned in the door of the kitchen and watched his girl friend shift things around shelves to make room for the newest member of the pickle family. “They gotta stop giving you these things because we can’t afford to buy another fridge.”

“We don’t have room for another fridge anyway.” She said.

Etta’s hand appeared over the fridge door holding a tupperware container.

“Can we throw away this potato salad?”

John snatched it away. “No! That’s mine!”

“Why? How old is it? It looks old.”

He shouldered Etta out of the fridge and tenderly placed his potato salad on top of the pickle tub. “I bought it like, two days ago. It’s still good.”

` She pushed at him. “It’s gross.”

“It’s delicious and I was going to share but now I don’t think I’m going to.”

“I didn’t want any of your nasty -” She began but John cut her off by sealing his mouth over hers.

He fucked her on the kitchen counter, his hands spread around her tiny hips, spidering across her flat belly. All of his favorite parts. She wound willowy arms around him and clung.